Darren Dawidiuk is taking his experience and knowledge from his life as a rugby player into one of his other big passions.

The former Gloucester hooker, who now plays for Premiership new boys London Irish, has had his own personal training business called Duke Box Gym for the last two-and-a-half years and has seen it grow quickly in that time.

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It all started when the 29-year-old helped his next door neighbour get in shape to compete in triathlons two-and-a-half years ago and he now has converted his garage into a fully equipped gym at his home in Longlevens.

“It’s something I’ve been interested in from when I first started playing rugby,” said Dawidiuk, who spent eight years at Gloucester before leaving at the end of last season.

“I went to college, got into the gym stuff and it’s something I carried on with.

“I’ve been thinking for the last few years about what I wanted to do and it’s an easier transition going for rugby to personal training having my own performance gym, from one thing I love to another thing I love so I came up with the name and got my garage fully kitted out with gym equipment.

“I spend more time in the garage than I do in any other room.

“It started with my next door neighbour and other people got in contact to say can you train me.

“I’m just training people around my rugby training and on days off.

“In the summer I put on boot camps for girls and boys and they became really popular.”

Dawidiuk has built his client base with many current and former rugby players among them, including former Gloucester team-mates Nick Wood, Olly Morgan and Andy Hazell.

During the period he was without a club over the summer, Dawidiuk remained in good shape thanks to the amount of time he spent in his gym training alongside with prop Yann Thomas, who also left Gloucester at the end of last season and now plays for Rouen in France.

“Yann Thomas went back to pre-season later so me and him were training together every day, pushing each other so it was great to have someone like that motivating you and pushing you and I was doing the same for him,” said Dawidiuk.

“I came into pre-season at Irish fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been before at Gloucester.”

Dawidiuk also offers some advice on nutrition and some free programmes, regularly posting advice and videos on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Social media has been a key driver for Dawidiuk as well as word of mouth with many of his neighbour’s friends getting in touch from the moment it all began.

He said: “I put a lot of free stuff on Instagram so if someone doesn’t know what they want to do there are lots of free programmes to help them out.”

Darren Dawidiuk

With rugby being such a short career, Dawidiuk has had an eye on becoming a personal trainer for a while and will look to do it full-time once he stops playing professionally.

“It’s just going from one passion to another,” he said.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about not just couple of years but five or six years.

“I’ve got my training qualifications and everything I’ve done and learned from rugby I’ve got quite a lot of knowledge so I’m looking to use that when I get into it full-time.”